


You Can Sin or Spend the Night Alone

by apollos



Series: all the times in-between [9]
Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Angst, Catholicism, M/M, Revenge Sex, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-23 22:08:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21088568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apollos/pseuds/apollos
Summary: There was more to that tape than meets the eye. Post 8x04, "Charlie and Dee Find Love."





	You Can Sin or Spend the Night Alone

**Author's Note:**

> this functions as a sort of sequel for "holy sick divine night." events in "count no man" & "in and out" are also referenced.

Dennis is all smiles on the way out, laughing with Dee and making jokes about Charlie and the Waitress. Dee has parked closer, so he gives her a wave goodbye and one of those little _ah-ah _laughs. Mac's been joining in on the jokes; Mac thinks nothing of it. Dennis likes to win, and tonight, Dennis has won.

Except when they turn around in the shadowy part of the parking lot and Dennis puts an arm around Mac's shoulder and pulls him close, he takes the opportunity to whisper right in his ear, "Whore."

"What?" Mac ducks out of Dennis's arms. "_I'm_ the whore? What?"

Dennis's smile drains from eyes but stays on his face, only visible from the dim lighting around the mansion, the sky devoid of stars. "You fucked Trevor."

"We were wrestling on that video—"

"No. After." Dennis puts the arm back on Mac's shoulder, pulling himself down. "In my _bed_. You know the camera's there, huh? What did you think was going to happen?"

Explanations and excuses fly through Mac's head, but he can't grab onto one fast enough. Now at Dennis's car, Dennis leans over him, boxing him in against the passenger-side door.

"You wanted me to see," Dennis concludes. So close to Mac, their noses almost touching. Anybody coming here could see, could figure it out. Mac squirms, trying to get out from under Dennis.

Dennis lets go. He opens the car for Mac and goes around to the driver's seat, whistling.

The ride is quiet. Mac doesn't dare to speak. Dennis seems to be chewing on his own words, cheeks flexing, fingertips drumming on the steering wheel.

Mac did not plan this. He'd gotten the vibe from Trevor, sure, more than just faking him out with the moves shit. Mac always gets the vibe. He'd still been surprised when Trevor had propositioned him, cupping a hand around his ass while Mac was on the floor, face-down, leaning in his ears and saying, "I bet you're a better lay than that bitch." He'd pinned Trevor as somebody who wouldn't toe that line. Still, Mac let him cup his ass, and he rolled over and grabbed at Trevor's jeans and he'd told him, _on the bed_. He'd thought, _in front of the camera_. He thought, _I'll take the tape out later. _He did not.

They're back at the apartment now. Dennis opens Mac's door for him, then takes him by the hand and leads him up the stairs. Thank God for their antisocial neighbors, Mac thinks, because this is the first time Dennis has ever held his hand here, and somehow that feels more intimate—more _damning —_than all those times Mac has bent Dennis over something and had him. Those were easy to distance himself from, those were easy to explain as the temptation of sin. Holding another man's hand—

Dennis unlocks the door to the apartment and leads Mac inside. It looks nicer than usual, tidier, and there are candles lit and soft music coming from somewhere. A scheme, a plan, and Mac thinks of either Dennis or him—it doesn't matter, words in each other's mouths—saying _who is this versus?_, and knowing, in this case, the answer is him. Mac feels duped, stupid and sick.

They don't do that. Not to each other. Except now they do, and this isn't the first time this has happened. Dennis sits Mac down on the couch and drops his hand.

"Look," Mac pleads. "Drop this shit, okay? This candlelight dinner type'a shit? You're scaring me, man."

Dennis smiles. He sits in a chair and crosses his legs at the knees, laces his fingers. "The trucker, that I understood," Dennis begins. "I know Chase Utley was important to you. A bit of a dick move on my part. And, hey, I'm sure it's not every day you meet somebody who comes on to you like that. But I thought we moved past that. I thought you understood."

"What is there to understand, Dennis?" Mac asks. His voice shakes, so he keeps it low, a simmer compared to his usual boil. "I can have sex with whoever I want."

"Wrong." Mac expects Dennis to yell this, to leap from his chair and unhinge that jaw of his and start screaming, but Dennis just says the word plainly, like a greeting or an announcement of the time.

"Uh, no." Mac cocks his head. "Not wrong. I am a grown man, you see, and what I do with my life is my business."

"Do you really think that?" Dennis uncrosses his legs and uncrosses his fingers, leaning forward instead. The tan looks ridiculous, but he looks good in the tux, and Mac derides him for it in his mind—of course Dennis looks good, and Dennis knows he looks good. Dennis always looks good. Dennis always knows he looks good. Mac fidgets inside of his own skin.

"Yes, Dennis. I do."

"Then leave. If you don't like what we have going, then leave."

"No—" Mac gapes. "No, I like what we have going on, dude. I'm not going to—no!"

Dennis gets up from the chair and sits down next to Mac on the couch now, close, nearly on his lap. He takes Mac's cheek in his hand. "If you like what we have going," he says, softly, smoothly, the voice he uses on the girls in the tapes, "then don't fuck other men in my bed, okay?"

"I—" Mac lets Dennis touch him, isn't sure what else to do. Standing on the ledge of a building and about to fall off, no mattresses to pad his fall and Charlie to pick him back up and laugh it off. No tape to immortalize his deed and shine light on his soul. Just Dennis, and Dennis's eyes, looking almost teary, but that can't be right, that can't be it. Mac swallows.

Dennis knows the words. Mac doesn't. That's why they work. Or, rather, Dennis oftentimes voices what Mac's thinking, translating raw symbols and feelings into things other people can comprehend. But this—they don't vocalize _this_. Mac doesn't want to, thought Dennis didn't want, to, either, and he closes his eyes and prepares himself to fall. Prepares to hear what Dennis says next.

"Hey. Look at me."

Mac opens his eyes and turns to Dennis. "Look," he says. "I'm sorry for—uh—messing up your sheets, or whatever. I mean, I'll do the laundry, anyway. You can just go ahead and toss away that tape and pretend that never happened, huh? Sorry. I was gonna take it out, but I forgot."

"Mac," Dennis breathes. Mac thinks about how people used to think cats stole a baby's breath. "There is no need for us to hurt each other like that."

Mutually assured destruction? Too much. Mac jumps up.

"You slept with Maureen Ponderosa, like, a month ago! _After _you _divorced _her and begged me to move back in with you! You slept with that Mexican chick from Thundergun! You sleep with girls every goddamn day of your life! You don't—who I sleep with, that's between me, myself, and God, Dennis."

Shaking, Mac heads back to his room and slams the door. He lets himself drop to his knees on the floor. Who cast the first stone? They've been casting stones for years. That's all they fucking _do_, is throw rocks at each other and laugh when the other bleeds and clean the blood up afterwards, lick at the wounds. Loving that part, too, the putting back together things that are broken. Mac grabs himself around his arms. Tomorrow is a Sunday. Tomorrow he will go to mass and take communion and confess afterwards, and then he will step into the sunshine and he will come home and—

Dennis knocks at the door. "Go," Mac shouts through it.

"No," Dennis shouts back. "Let me. Let me talk to you."

Mac rubs at his eyes and sighs.

He lets Dennis in.

"That was out of line," Dennis says, and his apologetic tone makes Mac think he's talking about his own behavior and not Mac's, though it's likely he's talking about Mac's, too. "I—Mac, what I'm trying to say is, we've got a good thing going, alright? Me and you? Here? This? Paddy's? The gang?" Spiraling out, getting broader, Denis waves his hands around. "Let's not make waves."

Mac waits for a second. Dennis leans against the doorframe and grabs Mac's hand again, bringing him close. "Okay," Mac says. Duped, stupid and sick.

Dennis smiles. Backs out of the door. "Good. I'll see you in the morning, alright? Get some sleep."

Charlie once told Mac that he asked Dennis if he ever learned to share and Dennis had started talking about how gods don't need to share, and when they do it's cause for a feast, or whatever dumb shit Dennis had said. Charlie told Mac all of this in high school, when Dennis was going through one of his phases where he was _weird _around Mac, clingy but quiet, mean when he spoke but insisting Mac stay with him. Mac had thought, oh. Oh.

Dennis never learned to share. Mac doesn't like to be shared.

Mac has always had a talent for picking out the sharpest stone. Dennis has always had a talent for dodging.

A million different methods and metaphors, but it's all useless, here with his knees pressing into the hardwood floor, hurting, kneeling, not in the good way, not that there has ever _been _a good way. His soul is a puppet on a string.

Okay, Mac thinks as he pulls himself together and takes himself to bed. He doesn't feel tired, but there's nothing else to do, so he strips down to his boxers and slides under the covers. Okay. He cannot do this anymore. He cannot act like he's twenty and a wide-eyed, scared kid with shitty tattoos and a slick-backed hairstyle waiting outside a liquor store with condoms in his wallet (just in case, just in case—they don't like to use condoms, that crowd. He doesn't, either, but this is different) It's wrong, it's filthy. It's self-destructive. Even more than the whole thing—the whole thing, wrong in and of itself—it's that with Trevor and with the truck driver, Mac knew going in that it was going to be a two-fold opportunity. Pushing boundaries. Waiting for the give.

_If you want me to be yours_, Mac thinks. Then he thinks, _he knows I already am his_.

He falls asleep practicing tomorrow's confession. _Sit back, Father, this is going to be bad, _he pictures himself saying. _Really bad. Not only did I lay with another man, but I did so out of wrath._

_Wrath, my child?_

_Wrath. I did so out of an anger in my heart, a baseless anger._

_Can you tell me more?_

_I did it to get back at somebody over something stupid and I've done it twice and the first time is sin and the second time is intention, right? Can the devil trick me in the same way twice? I guess he can, if the temptation's strong, right? It doesn't make me weak, it makes me—_

No, no, no. He won't bring Dennis into this with him.


End file.
